十一(eleven).
Years of conditioning and my eyelashes are still
tangled antennae rusting at their posts. Mama cries
for a body that cannot broadcast, a field gone at-
rophy. I fail at the mechanics of want, that good
posture of youth who bloom like algae under film.
When she harvests my lashes, I stay still.
Practice consumption. A girl who kisses
the red tide is currency. I run a hand over
my eyes and come up with a palm
of tiny probes, lids wide and frantic.
二十一 (twenty-one).
The trick to having bearable sex is picturing myself still-
born, free of inertia and all its implications. Fake cries
to sand my teeth on the bedpost, at-
tack the spine of a manifesto. Pretend to be a good
communist, the kind people die capturing on film
so they can jack off to halogenic still-
frames in heaven. I am some body who kisses
just to consume more bacteria, who cannot go with-
out her crimson pupil, its lubricated sali-
ence. I was ten for two decades and no-
w finally a machine. I court men into empty
parties with X-rays of my uterus.
Pull my hair the right way and I will sing
shame like an accordion, only more frantic.